Visual Studion 2008 takes ages to load a solution

Question

My VS2008 is stuck for the past 3 minutes loading a single project from a solution of about 20. I can see the status line saying Loading project file ... and it is stuck there. Does anyone know how to troubleshoot this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

First, as you say this is just happening, try quitting / forcing the program to close and try again - it could just be an accident that doesn't repeat. If however it does repeat:

You can try launching Visual Studio in safe mode by going to the Visual Studio command prompt (or regular one and navigate to the Visual studio directory) and typing Devenv /Safemode

If this works, it must be a bad addon you have - try uninstalling recently installed extensions and addons.

If it didn't work, try taking a look at Virus scanners and possibly exclude your project directories.

If it still doesn't work - test other project files, it could be something wrong in your project file that Visual Studio does not like - however, I'm not an expert here and can't really help you any further.

Answer 2

Other options not previously covered;

1. reduce the number of projects in your solution, OR increase the amount of available RAM.
2. reduce or remove your dependancy on drag n' drop controls in your form designer, try dynamically generating some controls from code, particularly memory heavy objects such as typed datasets and associated data control plumbing (data adapters etc).
3. Reduce or consolidate the number of sub forms with custom controls.
4. Look to see whether you are adequately disposing of types that use interop and cleaning up all controls.

Answer 3

Have a look at this thread: Visual Studio 2005 takes forever to load a project.

The solutions described are:

1. Turn off anti-virus
2. Turn off source control
3. Modify some VS files